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The origins of scrapbooking are, of course, as a paper craft, and in some ways are a loop of going from the paper books with photo-corners, to photo albums and sleeves in pages, to its current form - preserving our pictures and memories through time.  Now, in this age of digital photography, one may be hard-pressed to find a 35mm camera user.  Instead of pictures being stored in envelopes, or drawers waiting to be organized, and put in an album, they are stuck on memory cards, or hard drives waiting to be printed, and put in an album.  So, why not take advantage of all that can be done with a computer when it comes to scrapbooking?  Here are some ideas…

 

1. Take advantage of all of the fonts within word processing programs, as well as any photo editing, or scrapbooking software.  Use them for journaling, or enlarge letters for page titles.  Paper scrapbookers can them print and cut them out, while digital scrapbookers can place them within their layouts there on the computer.

 

2. Use photo editing software to fix or enhance photos, switch them to black and            &nb sp;   white, add special effects or captioning (with the above tip) to put more of a personal touch right into the pictures.

 

3. Resize, and crop pictures on the computer before printing them out.  Pictures can be arranged on a blank page, grouped, or collaged and then printed out as one image to be cropped into a paper scrapbook page layout. 

 

4. Clipart is everywhere!  Printable digital elements can be used to embellish paper scrapbook layouts.  Even printed digital layouts can be embellished with separately printed clipart to add dimension and depth to scrapbook pages.

 

5. Digital layouts can be found online.  Once downloaded, digital photos can be placed in the layout.  Create a CD to keep a digital album, or print out the layout at home, or through a printing service.  Design a pre-made layout to print out, and adhere developed, or printed photos for placement into a scrapbook album. 

 

Digital photography is here to stay, and technology is making it easier everyday to store, organize and preserve our pictures, and our memories. Whether with a specific digital scrapbooking software package, or individual clipart elements, using a computer to assist in scrapbooking can add a unique personal touch to page layouts without taking away from the traditional paper craft artistry of scrapbook albums.     

Tags: Scrapbooking

Your scrapbooking space may vary from a dedicated room to a corner of the dining room table, but how you have your supplies organized will make all the difference in making the most out of the your scrapping time.

• Have separate cups or storage containers for smaller supplies, pens, eyelets, adhesives, etc. and keep them there so they don't get spread around your work surface, under the desk or lost in a drawer somewhere.  Putting like objects together in a container frees up loads of work space too.
  
  
• Paper storage helps you find what you need, when you need it.  Store this horizontally - either in racks or flat boxes (I've even heard a tip about using pizza boxes!), or in vertical files. By theme or by color - whichever works best for you.
  
  
• Make project pouches - as ideas come to mind, gather papers, photos and other things for layouts and keep them all together in one pouch.  Then when you find yourself with 15 minutes  (because sometimes that's all the time we have) you can pull out a project pouch to create a quick layout!
  
  
• Have a place for your leftover scraps. Throw snippets of ribbon or floss into a baggie, or clear plastic container, and toss paper scraps into a flat box, or clear envelope to get a quick look at what you have.
  
  
• If you don't need it, do not toss it - donate it, or better yet put it aside for the next crop you go to.  One scrapper's trash can be another scrapper's treasure. LOL!

Be creative, scrapbooking space organization doesn't have to be boring.  You can use creative and crafty ways to consolidate your supplies, leaving you more time and space for scrapbooking.

Tags: Scrapbooking Organization

Give Customer Contact a Personalized Touch

Aside from the possible exchange of emails, or quick conversation you might have with a customer regarding her order, how else do you keep in touch with your customers? Sure, you might put out a monthly e-newsletter to let your customer base know the latest, but adding a more personal touch to your customer contact might be get you noticed, and therefore, remembered.

Here are some ideas to personalize your customer service…

1. Design a note card that reflects you and your business. For those in the Scrapbook business, take a picture of a layout created with your products, then upload it to a greeting card service. Or if you do business online, create a screen shot of your website to put as the image for the front of the card. Use this card for individualized customer communications.
2. When gathering contact information, be sure in collect your customer’s mailing address and phone number, as well as their birth date (month and day). Then send a card with a discount coupon to each for their birthday.
3. Keep a record of your customers’ orders. As products go on sale, send notes to those who commonly buy that product, or make a suggestion for a sale item that might coordinate with a previously ordered product.
4. Send a “Thank You for Your Order” card. Give them some tips on how they could use that product in their next album. Let them know of coordinating items that are also available. Depending on how soon you send the card, they may receive that before they receive their order.
5. Make sure always include your contact information, phone number at least, in any customer communications. You want to make sure that your customers know you are always accessible.

Think about it, your customers get sales ads, and who knows how many newsletters, and special offers-but how many receive a personalized card? They feel remembered; therefore, you’ll be remembered.

Tags: Customers

Originally I was going to write this under our "wahmadmin" membername, but decided I wasn't going to hide behind that - I've been the recipient recently of a lot of spam (some by some well meaning WAHMS) and there is one ignorant WAHM site owner that has spammed a great deal of WAHMs. 

Rather than rehash the whole story here about Samantha Kobs the WAHM Spammer of the Year - I want to refer you all to read Anita's and Val's posts at their blogs 2WAHMs and WorkingWAHM.  Not only will you learn the whole story, but you'll learn about the Spam laws, where to report Spam to the Fed'l Trade Commission AND you'll get a first hand view of what happens when you run your business with complete disregard.

Let's just say if you've ever received an email from Samantha Kobs - you're probably a victim of Spam!  Val, Anita, Kara - add onto this thru your comments!  I know you want to! ;) 

Tags: Ethics

It's Thursday - almost the weekend! I bet that statement means different things to each of us though.

If you are a Work at Home Mom who stays home all week - then the weekend might mean that hubby will be home to help with the kids! That's something to look forward to! May mean more quality family time, or may mean more quality work time for you! LOL!

If you work at home and out of the home too - hopefully, the weekend means time away from at least one job and more quality family time!

And then for some of us, Saturday and Sunday are almost like any other day. We're the ones that need to be reminded what day it is! LOL! We can at least celebrate not having to take the kids to school-but may have traded that for soccer practice!

Whatever the weekend means to you - I hope it's a good one!

Tags: Momstuff

Anyone who knows me, knows that my first website was Mom's Online Retreat - it's my baby! Always a work in progress!

I just had to brag, because I'm so proud of the way she's looking! (Yes, SHE!) Let me tell you why! I was the lucky winner of a customized header made by our very own Designed by Lara. I took forever deciding on what I wanted for the design - but once I got the idea to her she ran with it and created an absolutely beautiful collage style header for the site, and I was also able to use it for the header image in the site's blog The Retreat News.

Once I got the header up though, I found that I wanted to refresh the colors. So, it's gotten a new color scheme as well. AND my newest addiction is stock photos! So I went crazy and put up images on each of the main retreat area home pages! We've moved out of the Castle and into a LogHome(ish) Retreat Center! (In my mind of course!) But I think the images really add to the feel that I want visitors to have at the site!

Still have a couple of bugs and will always have something to add - but I'm so happy with the results so far! Lara was able to capture all the retreat areas in the picture collage header design - and it truly was an inspiration! Really help me set the tome I wanted for the site!

Hard to get specific until I get the general goals down.  So this is what I'm starting with here - and then I'm sure as time goes on I'll get more specific.

• $$ Aspirations are still hard for me to figure - my online income at this point is sporadic - and that's one thing I want to change - get it to be more consistent.  Take advantage of the different income streams I have started working on, and get that drip trickling into a stream!  GOAL:$1000/ mo by the end of the year - with all streams combined that is realistic.


• Mom's Online Retreat - I think I'm moving from the castle into a mountain lodge or a cottage. LOL!  I plan a restructuring of the site, keeping the "Retreat Areas", but doing away with one area "The Towers" which is all blog feeds - putting each feed on it's respective Retreat Area homepage (That only makes sense to me I'm sure!) will get  more niche related content to those main pages.


• ScrappinWAHM - Get the site further up to date with product launch, and added content about the online scrapbooking service & content.  Add pages as to the various ways we can build a scrapbooking business with TLC.


• TLC - gotta fire up my team!  I've gone back to the Team Blog and am using that to update Team members.  Oh-and there is a Carribean Cruise Incentive that my hubby has already promised to take care of the kids during if I qualify!  Still need a more solid game plan for that (only 6 months to qualify!)


• SOC - These goals are on hold until I get a better understanding of the most recent policy changes, as they may effect my biz plan here.

As far as continuing my "online education"...

• I want to learn more about using PLR articles and such to beef up the content in my blogs and websites. 


• I want to improve my writing skills where article writing is concerned as well.


• I plan on being more active in my Affiliate marketing & article marketing efforts.

There I think that's a good start - I'm sure there is a lot more, but this one is long enough. ;)  I'll update as I go along.

 

Well, we all got back to our normal routine this morning!  Myself included.  This last couple of weeks, with the eldest home from school and hubby on daytime vacation, had really thrown my work schedule out of whack. 

My oldest son is in first grade, and discovering the fun of the internet (they start them online so early at school!) so there were additional demands for computer time (what's normally my work time)  PLUS with DH home during the day-my desires for spending quality time with the family surpassed my desires to be online.  Definitely much needed quality time-so no guilt there.

Now it's back to the routine - everyone is back to school and back to work.  Time to focus on those goals I've been talking about, but still only have written down in my head! LOL!

I've seen this quote before, and found this at JellyMuffin.com - a good thing to keep in mind as we go through our every day lives, especially with the hustle and bustle this time of year can bring...




Oh, and don't forget to breathe!

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